Lies – You Are We Arehttp://youareweare.com
Marie BiondolilloTue, 12 Dec 2017 21:36:50 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.4http://youareweare.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/jeeddd-150x150.jpgLies – You Are We Arehttp://youareweare.com
3232My Short Story “Nickel Song” is in the Fall Edition of VoiceCatcherhttp://youareweare.com/lies/my-short-story-nickel-song-is-in-the-fall-edition-of-voicecatcher
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 20:13:35 +0000http://youareweare.com/?p=2670I’ve got a short story in the fall edition of VoiceCatcher. The entire issue is excellent, with great nonfiction essays, poetry and art by Portland female writers. Check it out!

Sheila’s basement had a timbered ceiling, if you considered the beams holding up the first floor to be “timbers.” And if you considered something only five and a half feet off a cement floor to be a “ceiling.”

She didn’t. Not exactly. She noticed that she had to duck her head under the “timbers” as she made her way to her easel, but just enough to accomplish the movement. Not enough to really notice the fact of it, to feel ashamed that a half-finished basement was her “art” “studio.”

But she didn’t really treat it like an art studio. An art studio, she would have taken care of. There wouldn’t have been that proliferation of broken furniture — Grandma Beaton’s organ, the tweed pull-out couch that used to be in the twins’ room, a laundry basket of unraveling black wicker. She would have swept the cobwebs out of the eaves, the foundation dust off the floor.

No, the basement wasn’t a real space to her. Not like the kitchen, with its drawer pulls that she’d painstakingly replaced with brass ones from Restoration Hardware. The bedroom, with its skylight that she got on a ladder to clean.

This not-real space didn’t need to be staged. You could weave a path between piles of broken furniture; stick an easel and a radio in the least spidery corner. Spend an undisclosed amount of time alongside the earthworms, writhing in this space between the underworld and the lighted home above.

Not that Shelia writhed. She bopped a little, when particular songs came on the radio. The station she always listened to, KISM, played Alice Cooper’s syndicated show. She knew all the songs, which had been written before she was born, making them less painful than the music of her lifetime. She could afford to feel sentimental when she heard them because she had no real memories to attach to them, other than the second-hand ones of characters from films or books. Her parents didn’t really like music.

The actual music of her youth made her feel old, blue, wasted. It sometimes seemed as if her generation hadn’t really accomplished anything, and weren’t on the path to doing so. They were sandwiched between two much larger generations of low repute, who soaked up the lion’s share of those long, inaccurate thinkpieces about The World Today. She didn’t mind, most of the time, unless that music was playing.

Then she remembered what it was like. Waiting with boys in parking lots, feeling like THINGS were going to happen to her. To them. The music had said so, hadn’t it?

The paintings Sheila made weren’t good, and she knew it. She didn’t paint to be good at it, the way she baked or worked or cleaned her house. She painted to see paint on her fingers, she painted so she could be alone listening to music, and no one could say anything about it. She painted because her husband was too tall to enjoy going into the basement.

She wasn’t exactly sure why she’d married John, and it scared her, that no one had tried to stop her, to get her to fill out the proper paperwork. It seemed inappropriate to her that she was allowed to run around making decisions about things like this, without having to run them by a committee. What if she’d done the wrong thing? What if she’d done the right thing for the wrong reasons? What if it were he that was wrong to marry her? She felt she needed some metrics to measure her performance in this arena. A list of key performance indicators, like they used at work.

The children seemed happy enough, but weren’t children always happy? Maybe not. Some of her friends’ children seemed unhappy, but they had “sensory processing difficulties,” or were gifted, or had too many after-school enrichment programs to attend. She tried not to overschedule the twins, and to feed them a lot of food, and to give them a certain degree of privacy. It had worked; they seemed fine.

But were they fine? Would they continue to be fine? What if it came out, that she spent hours every day in her basement, churning out sunflowers and seascapes, still lifes and self-portraits? Her paintings were large, made to scale or bigger. She painted them on old canvases, one over another. It didn’t matter to her, destroying one so another might live. She’d never hang them upstairs; she barely looked at them after they were finished.

There are worse things than being a bad painter, she thought. If that’s all they’ve got on me, it’s not enough.

But what about the other things?

If no one knows, did they really happen?

Certainly that was how it felt like to her. The other things she did had been done by another Sheila, a ghost with her hands, the self she was in dreams. It seemed impossible that the deeds of that Sheila could ever overlap with those of workaday Sheila, scrubber of stoves, balancer of budgets. Hair flat and smooth, long feet like white boats in her black leather loafers, confidently carrying groceries into the open floor plan of her home, a phone jammed between her ear and her shoulder.

How could that woman love a basement where she couldn’t stand up straight? Who could imagine her wailing along with Stevie Nicks? Who would believe it if you told them about her slender fingers, short-nailed, with silver rings, sliding over the brown, furred arms of the guest auditor, speaking low and fast to him about extenuating circumstances, nearby wine bars?

There was a party. The party had: members of Congress, hounds, pomegrante vodka cocktails. The party only played Bob Seger, at the party.

Bob Seger himself came. He was crying and had wind in his beard. He could not believe all the things that had happened to him, nor all the feelings that the things inspired. He picked up a small girl in a starched white dress. He gave her piggy back rides while the congressmen looking on, frowning. Then he gave the girl some free lotion. The girl liked Bob Seger and thought he was very good at making lotion.

Making Lotion

The congressmen felt ambivalent about the party, but then they started drinking! They were like, whoa, I can’t believe how drunk I am. They were like, I’m going to make out with Bobby. No, no, said the other congressmen. Don’t do it! I will, said the congressmen, just watch me. They went up to Bobby and started flirting but then got embarrassed and ran away. The other congressmen watching were like, OMG, ha ha ha. Bobby was worried, because he thought maybe they were making fun of him.

Flirting

The congressmen were like, let’s go in the bathroom and put on lipstick and nailpolish and tie our shirts in knots under our breasts so we look like sluts. The other congressmen were like, okay! Then George Stephanopolous wanted to come, and they were like, you’re not a congressmen, but they let him come anyway. They dressed up sooo slutty and then came back out into the party and all the animals were shocked! But they laughed! And Bob Seger picked them up and gave them all piggy back rides, because that was what they really wanted anyway.

1a.) She was born in Russia; when she impersonates men she swaggers; her house has a lot of glass in it; she is obsessed with the following –
a.) small, personal regimes, like when people are in denial about certain things, or work too hard.
b.) how to have a burgeoning spa business
c.) learning how to enjoy winter
d.) slips of the tongue.

1b.) She was born in southeast Brazil; has never learned to dance; approaches homeless people in a very giving type mood, keeps her glasses in a sock; has never wanted the following:
a.) diamonds
b.) a purse with more than one pocket
c.) to know what people look like when they are sleeping
d.) a picture of herself standing near a monument.

1c.) Is from Bryn Mawr; her teeth hurt; has written two books that are quite boring, as they are plotless, ties her sweaters about her neck in order to make fun of others who do so; thinks the following are sinful:
a.) poorly kept nails on hands that hold things in cold weather, rendering the entire hand chapped, stubby
b.) Taking stories about people who are selfish too seriously, i.e. being morally moved by things, but in a way where you feel superior
c.) Swimming in medium-warm weather
d.) cheating at games

1d.) His friend Brent, who does not know he is a wife, nor that he does not have enough obsessions. Brent has never worried about the following:
a.) What mailmen think of him
b.) A good way to spit
c.) If his cat has any pattern-recognition
d.) If he likes the tapestry that covers his window.

4. A scholarship to West Point, because he is the fastest runner you’ve ever seen, and you might cry to see him run, it is the only beautiful thing about him.

5. Wonderful sneakers- they are holey, grey and maroon, smell like death. They are wonderful because he runs in them; they are transformed by the elegance his body attains, in the way of ordinary objects they take on a surreal importance when considered from the perspective of loss. Because we are up to 10 things, but this boy lost his feet, perhaps because of the diamonds, perhaps because of a chill fall, so now he only has 8 things: here are the last two:

a.) a picture of himself at a hockey game, circa 1987 or so, one tooth fucked, his dad has coffee, he has some – wait for it – Sunny D; they are cold at the ice-skating rink, and are wearing puffy coats.

b.) a self-important cat with eyebrows, a bit off tail, clipped nails.

A girl one day entered a nunnery, because she was mad. She stayed at the nunnery, because the novitiates were beautiful – flushed and embarrassed. Also, she liked the gardens, where the Mother Superior set cocks to fighting each other, in order to illustrate the libertarian tendencies of God. “He gives even the simplest creatures a sense of individuality, an ego to defend,” she said. “The strife that lives in the hearts of these cocks is but one twenty-third of the strife suffered by Man.” Sometimes the cocks would fight each other to the death, and this too the Mother Superior applauded: “Would that we could resolve our conflicts as simply – for God prefers death to strife!”

In fact, after a few days, the Mother Superior decided that there was really no good reason for the nuns and novitiates not to have such an outlet, and so she set up a small boxing gym in one of the lower refectories. She set them to fighting immediately, and it gave her no little pleasure to lean back in a battered armchair and cheer this or that one on. Sitting in the sun, her wimple askew, she would exhort the nuns to hit harder, to hit faster, to abandon themselves to violence. “Some say the id is the devil’s work, but I say that the devil is God’s work,” she said. “Yes indeedy.” The nuns fought clumsily at first, but, spurred on by the exhortations of the Mother Superior, soon became proficient, and then lethal. “Kill her, Sister Honore!” yelled the Mother Superior. “Send her to her Maker!” The Mother Superior encouraged the nuns to murder each other, as the more sinful they became, the greater would be their pleasure in the forgiveness of their God. “After all, it is no great feat for Our Lord to save a mere thief or gossip,” she said. “But a murderer – there God does his best and most skillful work. Do not deny him the honor of his sacrifice – make it worth it. For His Son to die for a few white lies is nothing – for him to die for a mass murderer is sublime!”

The angry young novitiate flourished in this atmosphere, and soon became undefeated. Her hands developed a permanent grime of blood, and her oft-broken nose gave her a rakish air. The Mother Superior loved her best of all, and many was the night they spent in each other’s arms – the noviate flushed and rough, the Mother Superior flabby and ardent. “Let’s make Him forgive us again,” the Mother Superior would whisper into the novitiate’s muff. The novitiate would writhe, filled with rage still, as well as with a suffocating, sexual guilt.

The nunnery soon became known as the most holy convent in the region. “There they test God to his limits,” it was said. “They are so secure in His love that they will do anything to try and lose it – debasery, debauchery, mass murder, cannibalism, lesbianism, cussing. They have a saying there: “Why ask Jesus to save with a drop, when you can ask for a cup?”” The convent became known as “The New Passion of the Christ Nunnery and Gym.”

One evening, her fist buried in one cunt, her head in another, the young nun had an epiphany. “I do not care that God loves sin,” she thought. “I don’t love sin. I’m tired of it. God will have to learn to love me as I am.” She extricated herself from the tangle of limbs, swatting off questing hands, and took a nice cold shower. She washed the blood from her nails, threw on some khakis and a tee, and walked straight into the nearest temp agency. Her life became a bland whirl of work and tv, and she liked it that way. Occasionally she longed for physical contact, or the thrill of guilt, or to crush a life beneath her hands, but overall she was happy to be clean and modern, dull and free.

The bandit’s cousin was beautiful, and because of this he carried no money in his pockets. Women liked to buy him things, and men were afraid of his cousin. He did whatever he wanted to, and he thought that he was cool.

And he was cool, in the sense that people thought that he was, and in the sense of being cool, but not in the sense of having character, where cool is very narrowly defined. But he did not need character, and so this was well enough.

He was such a very lovely man that women were forever pinching at his bottom, and old women trying to kill him: they thought it was not fair, him being so beautiful, they so old. One woman though, instead of trying to kill him with poison or thin knives, attempted to build a time machine. It worked, partially – she could send fruit back in time, or other items smaller than a fist, and simple in structure. But she could not send her body back in time, because it was too large and too complicated. Her plan had been to keep her brain in this time, but to send most of the other cells of her body – breasts, face, legs – back in time, so that they could become simple again. But her body had grown beyond the scope of machines. And so instead she sent back her heart – she made her heart become a child’s heart, clear and greedy.

It was then that she finally understood the bandit’s cousin – he was a purely stupid specimen, uncapable of love. Had she succeeded in becoming young and lovely again, he still would have cast her aside. And so she joined with the other old women in trying to kill him. They said to her, “Why did it take you so long to understand?” She replied, “I had to go back in time.” They said, “You are a bimbo. He has always been a bigger bandit than his cousin – you were just too stupid to see it.”

1a. Fergie stands for something to some people, and that is boggling. What does she represent? “Ethnic Other Who Has Worked Her Way Up?” We have a J. Lo. J. Lo is enough for J. Lo. Is it because there is a new generation of teens every 6 months? This is what it seems like. This is also what it seemed like when I was a teen.

1b. Is Fergie’s trashiness her appeal? The peeing? The shame songs, speaking into existence her desires – all of her songs, until “Glamourous,” (btw, sorry that I keep misspelling “glamourous,” I can’t help it, all spellings seem wrong), have been about how desirable she is? Is she really all that desirable? Does everyone want to f her? “Glamourous” is about how she’s tired of people wanting to f her and how she is tired of her image. How can she be tired of fame when she has only been famous for 3 months? Is she trying to convince us she is famous? Does this actually work? Can it benefit me?

To describe a thing accurately, he thought, you must know its trajectory. This is why he dropped everything he ever cared about.

He thought that if he did not tend it, and it still flourished, that it must be true. But the only thing that ever lived in his garden was morning glory, and the only actions he ever performed were based on fear of consequences.

So he thought he was a morning glory and fear type of person, but actually, he was. He did not have to be, but he happened to be, because he did not try to become anything else.

So he built for himself a robe of morning glory and burrs, and swanned around in it, shouting “I am the only realistic person who ever thought, lived, or felt! Pale before me, for I am you.”

Then he was upset because no one liked his art. So he wove strands of grass into it, saying, look, I have varied myself. I have become more complicated. Are my complications lovable? I cannot speak to you until I have told you all about myself.

But the breadmakers and cobblers of his town disdained this, and so he built a castle out of morning glory and copper, and it burned him, and to him the burns said, I am real, because suffering is the most real thing, because it is the thing that always remains, when I am not trying to avoid it. Only the unavoidable is real.

And no one wanted to go inside of his castle, because it was muggy inside, but he said, You are afraid of the truth. No, they said, I am just avoiding your castle. You will never avoid my castle, he replied.

And then he built a tin army, to make it true. He made everyone work in his copper castle, for tin soldiers, and he said, How fortunate they are that I care so much about them – I do not allow anyone to live in ignorance. I am the epitome of reason.

]]>http://youareweare.com/lies/rex-profanity/feed0The Nature of Modern Life is Obsession; The Nature of Obsession is Love; Other Blanket Observations.http://youareweare.com/lies/the-nature-of-modern-life-is-obsession-the-nature-of-obsession-is-love-other-blanket-observations
http://youareweare.com/lies/the-nature-of-modern-life-is-obsession-the-nature-of-obsession-is-love-other-blanket-observations#respondTue, 28 Jul 2009 05:30:48 +0000http://brassrocket.com/blog/?p=295HAAPY IN SERVICES!!

The spice of love is hate. The opposite of love is indifference.

At least so thought GOTH MINISTER, as he painstakingly appliqued butterflies to a baby duck bag in preparation for his sister-in-laws baby shower.